Captive
by RiMashiro
Summary: Absence diminishes small loves, increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle, and fans the bonfire. Four months locked up in a cell, and now she sees herself for who she really is.


**First Teen Wolf fanfiction! Yay!**

 **I started this after watching Erica die, because I thought she was rad and I wanted to do her justice. I totally ship her with Isaac, but the few fanfictions out there were cut off after Erica's death, so I started writing three at once! This is the only one I've completed, but hopefully the others will be finished soon!**

Feeling helpless was one of the many things Erica Reyes couldn't stand, right alongside being afraid.

When she had epilepsy she felt like she always was afraid. Especially since that awful video of her having a seizure was posted. After that she closed in on herself. She had never had many friends to speak of. She had a few over the years, but they all ended up leaving for one reason or another. Her parents and brother were the only ones who ever seemed to be there for her.

Taking her medication made her feel weak, too. She hated not being in control of herself. The side effects just hurt her even more, and the pills didn't do enough good for her to ignore what they did to her. So, she stopped taking them.

Looking back, she was _so_ glad she hadn't.

Had she taken that medicine, she wouldn't have had that seizure at school, one of the many that landed her in the hospital. She wouldn't have ever met Derek or become a member of his pack. She would still be the weak little girl who had seizures and no friends, who couldn't tell you why she got out of bed every morning.

She'd been so close to putting herself out of her misery.

Lycanthropy came along at the perfect time. It gave her Boyd, and it gave her _Isaac_. Scott and Stiles helped them fight the Kanima, but always at a distance. They were distrustful of Derek's Betas. Erica did do some bad things to them, throwing out threats and teases while she was still in the high of health. Allison switched sides on Scott too often for her to keep track of, though Erica had always hated her for what Derek told her Kate Argent had done, and for the hunter the Argents were grooming her to be. When she'd had an arrow aimed at Boyd's heart, all that was in Allison's eyes was a cold haze. Her grandfather was brainwashing her, that much Erica could see, but it changed nothing. As far as the girl was concerned, he had just brought forward something she'd always been.

Allison was a long list of things she had always wanted to be. Happy, strong, beautiful,

Not that Erica wasn't pretty, too. Confidence was never something she could have when she could fall apart at any moment. Now she had this wardrobe, full of red and leather and just enough fabric to get past her mom while still looking as sultry and unattainable as she felt she deserved to. She wore bloody scarlet lipstick and dark, smoky makeup that made her feel and look dangerous.

Although, she didn't need to wear leather jackets and dark makeup to be dangerous. She had claws like talons at her disposal, and fangs that could rip out a person's throat. She was fast and strong and climbing that stupid rock wall would never be a problem again. She felt invincible.

But even with all that, being trapped by those Alphas made her feel more helpless than ever before.

It wasn't as though she'd never been tortured before. Her first full moon was excruciating. The halo was insane, and she would've killed Derek on the spot with alacrity if Isaac hadn't been holding her back. When the Argents captured them she was terrified, and the electricity running through her body made her wish once more for her heart to stop, but it hadn't. Seeing Stiles get beat up by that man was mental torture for both she and Boyd. Her Batman wasn't invincible either.

Then they were free. All she could think about was running, getting out of that torture chamber and back to the depot. She wanted to apologize to Derek, apologize to Isaac. _I'm sorry, I shouldn't've done it, I wish I didn't, I was just scared, I was so, so scared._

She remembered fleeing pathetically through the woods with Boyd, then the alphas leaping out in front of them with claws out and fangs bared, and nothing more.

Her next memory was waking up in a vault.

When she agreed to become a werewolf she didn't think it would put her in constant danger. Derek had completely sugar-coated. Not to mention she had never felt as much pain in her life as she did after she turned. When Derek broke her arm to stop her seizure it was the first time she'd ever broken a bone. Then there was the training. It became obvious, once you got past being terrified of their Alpha, that he honestly didn't know what he was doing. He chose them because he knew they'd agree and because children of their age were easiest to turn. He didn't think it through. They were weak-willed. They didn't just catch on to his training, which made him angry at them and himself for being foolish about the entire ordeal.

She cringed at the memory of her immature crush on him. He saved her, and she was so _dumb_ , to think he'd like her, he'd _love_ her. She'd been so naïve. He did what he did to make himself strong, to benefit _him_ and him only. Over time he did grow to care about his little pack, but it didn't mean he loved her. After a while how Derek felt about her didn't matter.

Sitting for almost three months in a vault gave you a lot of time to think. She was good at deep thinking, since she never had many people to talk to. She thought about Isaac often. Her stomach twisted every time she thought of how many people had left him in his life. First, his mother when he was young. Then, when he was older, Camden left and ended up never coming back. His father (it may've been hell to be around him but he was all the boy had left) was murdered in cold blood, and now she and Boyd abandoned him.

Did he know that they wanted to return? That she'd been running _back to him_ , not away. Or did he still feel like she was just another name on the long list of people who were gone?

Every day sitting on the cold vault floor she missed him. She longed for the feeling of his long fingers twisting in her hair or fingering through the pages of a book as he read it to her. Fumbling with his keychain. Brushing against her cheek…

She loved him. Being held captive in a vault for months gave you a certain sense of self-realization, and she'd realized that she was in love with Isaac Lahey. She'd known before, _told_ him before, but never had she known so well.

Sitting in their prison, thinking about it this situation and this hell she knew now that she was living, a tear rolled down her face, then another. Before she could process her feelings she was crying silently, her back racking with sobs as she pressed her hands to her eyes in an attempt to stop the tears before they got worse. She didn't even have to look to know that Boyd was staring at her with his brown eyes full of pity. She hated pity. She would take someone being blindly furious with her than pitying her. Erica's entire life was a compilation of people looking at her and thinking about what a shame it was that such a pretty young girl suffered from such a horrible and debilitating disease.

"Erica?" Cora whispered. "Are you okay?"

Cora didn't say a lot about herself. She was a werewolf (duh) and knew Derek, but that was all she'd disclosed. It wasn't hard to see she preferred Boyd over her, but that didn't mean she didn't care. They'd all had an episode at one point or another.

"I-I'm fine." She fiddled with her necklace, a golden chain that had an exquisite carved pearl charm dangling from it. Isaac had given it to her a few days before she ran.

It had belonged to his mother.

"Do you want to talk about it?" They'd decided long ago that it was better to keep everything between them open, including the things they cried about. Nothing should be hidden among prisoners.

"You don't know who I'm thinking about." She kept her eyes on the floor. She couldn't look at Boyd because he knew and if she saw that knowledge in his eyes she'd burst into tears.

She fell asleep with the remainders of her memories streaking down her face.

"Erica."

It was Isaac. He was standing on the other side of the vault door, which was hanging open. She was standing just within the metal prison.

"I-Isaac?" He smiled that awful, beautiful smile that made her melt and she reached for him. As she did, he reached out with one hand and let something spill from his grasp. Some kind of…black powder?

Realization hit at the same time as the purple wall. Erica was thrown back, hitting the row of metal drawers on the opposite wall with a bone crunching force. Spitting out the blood that had flooded her mouth after impact, she struggled to fix her hazy gaze on the boy outside. Her mind was muddled but there was one question that stood out. _Isaac was a werewolf. How in the hell did he get anywhere near mountain ash?_ As her vision cleared she noticed the sinister gleam in his minty eyes. He stepped to the side so she could see the horror behind him.

It was all of them. The remains of the pack (with extensions). Derek, Scott, Stiles, and Allison Argent. They were fighting the Alphas, their vile captors.

And they were losing.

Derek had a bloody gaping claw mark spanning his chest, staggering dizzily from blood loss, nearing a place where the floor had long since caved in. Stiles was unconscious in a pool of what was most likely his own blood, small cuts zigzagging across his face. Allison was aiming her bow (the sight gave Erica a flashback of that night the Argents captured her and Boyd, the arrows protruding from his chest along with the one in her own leg) at the female Alpha who she saw most often, wincing every time she stepped with her right leg, a bleeding slice in her shoulder making her aim wobbly. Scott was at that moment thrown against a wall by the conjoined form of the twins in a way very similar to how the blonde had hit the wall a few seconds before, the plaster caving in behind him.

As Isaac stepped through the barrier she noticed the silver dagger glinting in his hand. The hilt was obsidian black with a ruby pommel glimmering at its base.

Black hinted at the edges of her vision. "Isaac, stop! What are you doing?" All she could even think about feeling was excruciating pain. She counting her injuries quickly, something Derek had taught them to do in such a situation. There were at least seven broken bones, a few being ribs, that, along with the pain, kept her from trying to escape. It would take hours for them all to heal.

"Why did you leave me? You chose _Boyd_ over me?" His eyes were full of pain. This was what she'd feared the whole time. The last thing she'd ever wished for was to hurt him.

"No! No, Isaac, please let me explain! It wasn't like that, you have to understand! I wanted to come back, we were coming back when-"

"Stop! I don't want to hear any excuses, you're lying." He stared directly into her eyes. His face was a mask of hurt and thinly concealed rage. "Everyone lies when they say they'll stay."

The love of her life swiped the blade in a wide arc that she could tell instantly would connect with her throat and effectively end her.

She felt tears streaming down her face as she screamed.

"Erica! Erica… come on, wake up! Stop! Erica!" She jolted awake, feeling the scream choke to a stop in her throat. Boyd towered over her, Cora barely reaching his shoulder beside him. "Are you okay? You've been screaming and thrashing for like ten minutes. You kept saying Isaac's name." She was panting, she couldn't catch her breath. Licking her lips she could taste the salt from what had probably been hours of crying in her sleep. "Nightmare?"

She bobbed her head, limp blonde waves creating a curtain in front of her face.

"Do you wanna talk about it?" She didn't, to be honest, but she'd had dreams that forewarned her of being kidnapped, so this most likely meant something.

"I was here, standing in the vault, but the door was open, and Isaac was standing outside. When I reached for him, he dropped some mountain ash on the ground, but I didn't realize what it was until I hit it. I was thrown back into the wall and I broke at least six bones. I couldn't move. I looked up and behind him were Derek, and Scott and his little pack. They were fighting the Alphas." Her eyes were beginning to well up with tears as she looked up to the other captives. "They… they were losing. Stiles was unconscious in a pool of blood, and the rest of them were just beat up, and bloody, a-and Isaac was just standing there. He smiled at me, but it wasn't his normal smile, it was… it was cold, and sadistic. He wasn't himself. Then he stepped through the barrier and accused me of leaving him, then…" She was sobbing again, damnit, she had to stop doing that. "He had a knife, and he was about to kill me, and I screamed. Then you woke me up."

When she was younger she'd had a dream where she was somewhere she'd long since forgotten, and she was being held hostage. They planned to kill her, A girl, part of the captors but much more merciful, took pity on her. "I'm sorry." She said. Thinking back, she could never remember the girl's face. The most prominent detail was black fingerless leather gloves gripping a gun. Dream- Erica knew what was coming. She closed her eyes and heard the gunshot. She felt cold blood splatter across her neck. As she drifted back towards consciousness, she heard herself whisper, "Thank you." She could still feel the blood when she awoke and as she struggled to calm her racing heartbeat. It felt so _real_.

This dream had been exactly the same way.

Whatever plan the Alphas had, it was reaching its climax. They'd been talking loudly and more often, preparations obviously being made.

A few weeks after her dream, Erica heard voices outside their prison while Kali came in to bring them some food and make sure none of them had died yet. The twins were being yelled at for something. She struggled to hear.

"That stupid Beta was as good as dead! The fucking mercenary saved him and got him away." A twin was saying.

"Do you at least know where they went?" Now it was the male Alpha, but not the leader.

"Does it matter? We wiped his memory of this place clean, it doesn't matter!" That was probably the other twin; the one she'd noticed was less aggressive.

"They _will_ find a way to figure out where we are. They will discover how to get the memories back, they're more resourceful than I had expected. We have to find him and kill him, or throw him in the vault with the rest of Derek's Betas."

"We managed to crash the motorcycle before they got away, and they were both pretty beat up after that. They must've gone to the hospital, and they're probably still there."

"What are we waiting for? Let's go!" The male Alpha called for Kali and soon they were all gone to the hospital to kill 'Derek's Beta'.

"Who do you think it was?" It was Boyd who broke the silence.

She couldn't bring herself to speak loudly, so she whispered. "Derek only has one Beta left. I don't think Scott counts."

Cora had gathered enough about Derek's pack over the past few months to understand. She slid over to Erica and placed what was supposed to be a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Erica."

"Maybe they won't get to him. Derek will be there for him, and Scott wouldn't leave Derek and Isaac alone when we were kidnapped. They'll protect him." Boyd didn't want Isaac to get hurt any more than the blonde Beta did, and she knew it, but she wasn't looking for sympathy. She just wanted to stop thinking about it.

"Do you think their plan has something to do with keeping us from shifting?" Her question hung in the air. They all knew the answer.

"When a werewolf doesn't shift for a long period of time, they lose control. When they finally do turn, their instincts will take over and they'll hunt down and kill anything that moves. My guess is that they've found a way to use that against Derek." Cora explained.

They shared a moment of silence before Erica whispered, "They're going to make us attack them."

"If the vault is open, won't we just run away?" Boyd interjected, anger lingering in his voice.

"Most packs have their druid emissary, a human who is well-educated in the supernatural world and helps them. I'd assume they're going to have theirs make a mountain ash barrier so none of us can escape." Tears began leaking from the corners of Erica's eyes before Cora could even finish her sentence. "It'll be like a damn dog fight."

The thought was unnerving to speak of aloud, so the conversation ceased after that. Somehow the stress of it all made her feel completely drained. Sleep was all she could do.

She was being… shaken. By someone with freaking massive hands, Jesus. And it _hurt_ , they were shaking her super hard. Everything was fuzzy. Was someone yelling? _Where's Isaac? Did I sleep over at… at the pack house again? Damn, I'm so freaking tired._ All she wanted to do was go back to sleep but the shaking! When would it stop?

Things began to focus a bit. The yelling now sounded like a name, her name. She could make out the shapes of two people. One was really big, probably the one shaking her. Would they just cut it the hell out?

She was starting to make out faces. One she recognized, Boyd, and one she didn't. Who was that girl? She didn't look happy. In fact, she looks fucking terrified. _What's her problem?_

Her memory was beginning to return in small increments, and she was starting to be able to see what was behind Boyd and that girl.

She could remember now that there was no way in hell she was in Isaac's bed at the pack house. She could remember now that she hadn't see Isaac in what she was pretty sure was nearing four months, judging by the number of days had gone by on Boyd's watch. That girl next to Boyd was Cora. And Cora was crying out her name at the top of her lungs.

She was finally returning to the land of the living.

Cora screamed Erica's name while Boyd shook her and shouted every few seconds. "What the fuck?" She muttered. "Stop that." At the sound of her voice, Cora began to sob uncontrollably. Boyd pulled the sobbing girl into his chest with one arm and used to the other to pull Erica against his other side in a depressing group hug. "What the hell happened?" Her voice is muffled by the other wolf's shirt her face is pressed into, but they hear her nonetheless.

"You-you wouldn't wake up! I-I thought- I thought you were d-dead!" Cora managed to stutter before erupting into sobs once again.

"I was sleeping. What's da big deal?" Fatigue slurred her speech.

Boyd stared incredulously at the blonde. "Erica, you were 'asleep' for almost twenty seven hours. You were also barely breathing and your heart rate couldn't have been any higher than twenty five beats per minute." The information snapped her out of her reverie and her mind raced for answers while Boyd shushed Cora in case the alphas were nearby.

"Cora, I'm okay. Everything's okay." She reached out to put a comforting hand on the girl's shoulder, but instead found herself being dragged into yet another embrace.

It took at least ten minutes to calm the distraught Cora. They were lucky; no one came to investigate the uproar. Apparently, Erica learned, the Alphas had come back as a furious mob. They'd failed in their quest to kill Isaac, getting only to the mercenary who'd rescued him.

Sometimes they could ask Kali what the date was and she would tell them, when she was in a good enough mood. The day before Erica's "miniature coma" (as Boyd had so kindly put it) was one of these occurrences, and they knew then that it was September ninth. After everyone had managed to calm down, they sat in silence, deep in thought.

It was one of those nostalgic days when they spoke of the lives they'd been torn from. Cora started it. "What do you miss most? Not people, but things, activities."

"I miss movies. I always thought they were something that could bring people together. It's one of my favorite things to do with the people I'm close to." Erica muttered. She refused to break her gaze from her toes. She'd gotten a pedicure a few days before running away (and being kidnapped), and splotches of the scarlet paint still decorated her toes. Boyd hummed in agreement.

"I always liked boxing. We had some punching bags and stuff hanging from the ceiling in our basement, and I would go down there when I was angry and needed to cool off or to keep myself stable so I didn't turn and rip Isaac's face off when he said something really stupid."

Erica scoffed. "I know that feeling really well. He could be a total ass sometimes."

Cora watched her expression as the subject of conversation drifted to all the stupid things Isaac had said at one time or another to make them angry, sometimes on purpose and sometimes not. The blonde wolf's face didn't change at all, but her eyes weren't so well concealed. Cora recognized the shimmer of melancholy, but she knew it was far deeper than some clinical depression that could be cured by drugs. She saw that look every time she looked at her brother, or in a mirror. She, Boyd, and Erica all shared it after months locked in the pitiful cell. She'd long ago categorized the look as the mark of someone who knew great pain and greater loss, and it had left them scarred in ways that nothing would ever heal.

They all could feel the moon's strength in the days before a full moon, beckoning them. A werewolf's senses were strongest then.

The alphas were packing up the day before the full moon. Whatever they'd been planning all these months was coming to its climax. If Cora's estimate was correct, the reason for the departure was obvious. Kali brought them a bit more food and water than usual, delivering it with a gleeful spring in her step. No one bothered asking why for fear of her realizing how much they knew.

Tension practically hummed in the air between the wolves the next day. They didn't want to talk about what was going to happen. No one knew how Derek would get there, if he would bring backup, if he could handle fighting all three Betas while they were so much more powerful than usual.

All of that, and they were terrified of the thought of one of them killing their Alpha (or in Cora's case, her brother, not that Boyd or Erica knew that detail).

Boyd began losing control first. It made sense, being he was the "youngest", so to speak. His eyes glowed molten gold as he clutched his head, the wolf within him struggling to take over. Erica exhibited similar symptoms a few hours later, the pain of the internal struggle causing her to wail for hours with minutes in between. Cora didn't begin struggling until the final hour before the moon rose in the sky.

The moon was seconds from rising when they began to hear the beating of a fist against metal. Plaster on one of the side walls began to crumble before completely giving out. Derek and Scott tumbled from the hole, coated in dust. They scrambled to their feet and faced the trio of Betas.

"Derek…" Cora could barely string together a coherent sentence, the moon seconds from taking her over completely, "You have to get out of here!" They were all shifting. Cora turned at the last possible second and saw a woman she didn't recognize pouring a handful of mountain ash on the ground right outside of the recently opened vault door.

Then everything went red and all rational thought disappeared.

Erica woke first. The first thing she noticed was that she wasn't freezing cold. In the vault there was no way for heat to get in, so it was constantly cold and they often woke up shivering. Some nights they'd pile up and use each for body heat, but those days were few and far between with the bad atmosphere between the three. Now she was in a bed. Her vision was foggy, but she could make out a dark apartment. Cora was unconscious beside her on the purple sheets.

The next thing she noticed was Isaac.

He was sitting on a folding chair beside the bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. His right knee bouncing with a ridiculous speed, he looked like the picture of stress. She would've sobbed if she hadn't blacked out first.

When she woke again he was still there, but asleep in a similar position, his head in one hand. Derek was across the apartment talking to Cora in a hushed tone. Scott and Stiles were arguing over a game of Monopoly ("Scott, I swear to god if you don't just pay me the Park Place rent, which I _know_ you can afford, I'm going to kick your werewolf ass!") on the floor.

She felt tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. A surge of emotion overpowered her senses and she sat up so the sobs wouldn't hinder her breathing. Seeing her awake, everyone in the room rushed over. Derek began ordering the others to give her room before they all mobbed her. "Are you okay? What's wrong?" Scott questioned from the foot of the bed.

She struggled to get her breathing under control before she tried to answer. "I'm just so damn happy to see you idiots again." A few people exhaled in relief, patting whichever of her limbs they could reach before moving back to their previous positions.

Somehow Isaac wasn't awoken by the excitement, but Erica's chest ached at the sight of him, the _real_ him, not him from a dream or a nightmare or a memory that left tears in its wake, but _him_ , and she couldn't stand being so close and not touching him.

She slid to the edge of the bed so her bare feet brushed the ground. Someone, she noticed, had changed her clothes. A loose green tee shirt she recognized as Isaac's hung from her malnourished frame, and some jean shorts she remembered leaving at the pack house an eternity ago hung loosely from her hips, nearly falling off. They'd all lost at least twenty pounds from the treatment of the Alphas.

She reached for him, her fingers just grazing his cheek, and he began to murmur her name. She reeled back in surprise. In a sad way, it was nice to know he dreamed about her like she did about him. She reached out again, this time letting her fingers drag lightly down his face and brushing under his chin.

Cora and Derek had finished their conversation, and while the latter went to check on Boyd upstairs, the former watched the one-sided interaction. She was interested to see what kind of person Isaac was, and since spending four months locked in a vault with her had made the wolf somewhat protective of Erica, whether or not she approved of him.

"Isaac." She spoke softly so not to startle him, but loudly enough that he'd hear. His eyelids twitched as he returned to consciousness. After a moment his eyes opened, and the sight of the foggy blue-green nearly flat-lined her.

"Erica?" Tears clouded her vision as she nodded. "Dead or dreaming?" She beamed, despite the tears streaming down her face, laughing at the cliché insinuation.

"I'm real. I'm here. I'm okay, everything is okay." His hands shook as he reached for her face, making sure she was truly as real as she said, tears beginning to well up in his eyes (not that anyone was judging him for it, and by this time everyone was watching the exchange). After a few seconds of this unbearable silence she flung herself at him, knocking the chair over and causing them both to topple to the floor in a mess of limbs. Erica pressed her lips to his in a kiss that was slow and deliberate, as well as long awaited. Stiles let out a wolf-whistle from across the room, but neither other them could be bothered to be embarrassed. She pulled away after an amount of time unknown to her, staying just a few inches above his face. Joy she hadn't thought she'd ever feel again blossomed in her chest. A blinding smile overtook her face. "Did you miss me?"

"I'm sorry." Erica whispered. She and Isaac were lying next to one another on his bed in the house, legs and fingers intertwined.

"What could you possibly be sorry about?"

"Leaving. Scaring you and everyone else, abandoning you-"

"Stop. You never abandoned me, Erica, you were taken. Don't act that way, please." She'd cried so much already, but a tear slid from her eye anyway.

"That's only half true. We… we did run." This time Isaac is silent. "Boyd and I were leaving, we were going to join another pack we heard howling in the woods." Tears fell freely by then. "I knew you wouldn't want to go, and you had a family here now. I couldn't tear you from this." Her eyes were shining with unshed tears, but he wasn't looking at her face. "I was having second thoughts, and I was about to tell Boyd I was going back when… the Argents showed up." He sucks in a nearly inaudible breath. "Allison was shooting Boyd, and she was going to kill him, and I was crying and screaming for her to stop, I was _begging_ her-" she was choking on sobs and had to stop before it got worse. Isaac stroked her face, wiping the tears away.

"It's okay. You really don't need to tell me." He whispered. She shook her head.

"I'm okay. They took us back to their house, and they tied us up with… electrical wires or something." He didn't know that much about their experience with the Argents. Stiles could only tell them so much. "Chris Argent was telling us… these facts about werewolves and electricity. He said enough electricity could keep one of us from transforming." His eyes widened. "And even more can… it can stop the healing process. " Her tears darkened his shirt. Her form shook with sobs. She reeked of fear, and regret, and melancholy.

And Erica. That smell that was completely hers, that under everything else, she would always have. After being with her for so long, any other wolf would say that his scent had intermingled with hers, and vice versa. That was what happened when a wolf found their lupa. They were part of one another. The smell they shared, the part of him that was with her, it hadn't gone away.

It would _never_ go away.

"Shh. Hey, it's okay, you're here now. I won't let anything hurt you. I'll never let anything hurt you again." They could both hear the solemn tone in his words, the determination. She felt the exact same way.

So there they lay, wrapped in one another's presence, like they would be for weeks after. Being apart was torture to them both, and now that they were back in one another's arms, they would let nothing and no one tear them apart. Never again. Erica fell asleep, exhausted all the time now, but Isaac remained, basking in the feeling of her back in his arms. Where she would stay, forever.

He wouldn't have it any other way.


End file.
